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NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: WASHINGTON, D.C.March 20, 2008Joe AlexanderDa'Sean ButlerBob HugginsDarris NicholsAlex RuoffWASHINGTON, D.C. Q. Good job on Jerryd Bayless. What was your plan? ALEX RUOFF: I watched a lot of video this week. He's a great player, great quickness. Tried to take away his right hand and limit his open looks as much as possible, but he got off toward the end. But great job team-wise. Q. During the Big East tournament, it was very difficult for you to find some shots. This was an athletic team you guys faced again tonight. How were you able to find the shots tonight that were hard to find during the Big East tournament? ALEX RUOFF: Joe has been on fire and we did a bad job about playing with him. Offense was stagnant. And we knew tonight the key was going to play off him and make open shots. Q. Joe, sort of along those same lines, it was a much more balanced offensive effort. Did you feel especially in the second half that the defense was backing you and helping you create things? JOE ALEXANDER: Yeah, definitely. I think this is what our team is capable of doing all the time. We have a lot of really talented offensive players. Q. I think they got within one point, then you hit a three followed by Alex. Talk about that sequence and how big that was to hit a couple of 3's. DARRIS NICHOLS: We haven't been hitting big shots when we needed and today we were able to hit them when we needed them. Q. Wellington with the screens and loose balls, things that may not appear to the eye, weren't quite as obvious, his contribution tonight, can you talk about that. Da'SEAN BUTLER: Wellington started us the first half, but the second half got a little bit more motivated and he just played very hard the second half and that was pretty much like one of the keys to us winning tonight. JOE ALEXANDER: Wellington plays well. He's a terrific player, you just have to guard. He does a lot of little things for us. It was big for him to step up for us in the second half. Q. Just talk about the excitement of now getting to face off a team like Duke in the second round. DARRIS NICHOLS: They have a great tradition. It's going to be a great game. I know a lot of us are excited and we'll have a lot of fan support. Da'SEAN BUTLER: They're a very prestigious team, they're very good, they win a lot of games. But everybody in the locker room is very excited to play them. It will be an exciting game for us to get on to the second round, this is our second game and we're ready to play. Q. Did this kind of seem like years past with hitting the three pointers and getting it done that way? ALEX RUOFF: I don't know if it seems similar to years past. Coming in tonight we knew we were going to get the looks, like I said before, with the attention on Joe and how hot he has been, we knew we were going to get the looks. The difference between our run two years ago and now is we kind of went inside out first and made some great passes. Q. Did it feel at all like a home game for you guys tonight with your fan base? And moving forward and looking at Saturday, what do you expect the crowd to be then and do you think it will be an advantage for you? JOE ALEXANDER: It seems like wherever we play it's like a hometown. There are always fans, we don't know how or why. We have a great fan base. If they're not where we're playing, they follow us where we're playing, and it will be great against Duke. Q. Was there a conscious decision to go away from Joe a little bit, trying to establish some other guys, because everyone expected he was going to get a lot of defensive attention? COACH HUGGINS: No. We ran the first three sets of the game to throw the ball to Joe. We knew they were going to give him a lot of attention and run at him when they put the ball on the floor. We talked to our other guys about getting out of line and stepping in the shots. Q. Just your comments about the balanced offense tonight and how much it helps to free up Joe a little bit more when everyone else was hitting shots like they did tonight. COACH HUGGINS: I'd rather have it this way. Alex and Jamie are the same way, you keep waiting for them to kind of start making shots the way Alex made shots today. And Darris made great shots for us today. And Da'Sean made shots early. We made mistakes that let them back in the game early. As well as they played early, we could have gotten the game going the way we wanted it to go. But that's why you call it a team. And that's kind of what we talked about at halftime is we have to stay in the context of what we do. And when we stay in the context of what we do we're pretty good. When we get out of that context, then we're not near as good. Q. You talked yesterday about simply making shots and today 11 three-pointers, tied a season high. Could you just simply talk about how well you guys shot from the outside and whether that's a conscious effort to take that many shots out there. COACH HUGGINS: It wasn't a conscious effort. We were still going to try to throw it close to Joe, but we felt we could play inside out. And those are the easy shots to make. When you grow up in your driveway, that's kind of what you do. You hit step-in shots. And Alex got some step-in shots, and then kind of got on a roll a little bit. We ran the stagger for him. We're up three or something at the time or maybe even two at the time, and he came off the stagger and made a screen -- made a three off the screen. And we ran out-of-bounds play for him where he had to get his shoulders turned and get in the shots. I think those are easier when you kind of get it going a little bit like he had it going. Q. Just your thoughts on the Duke match-up. How much of their game did you get to see today and what do you think of their team? COACH HUGGINS: Well, Mike's a Hall of Famer for a reason and he's won, whatever, 700 games for a reason. They're good. They're good. They really spread you and they've got a lot of guys that make shots. They shoot 3's. They do a lot of things off dribble penetration. Mike does a great job. They don't play the same way all the time. They don't play the same way every year, they kind of adjust to his personality and that's what good coaches do. We're looking forward to playing them, as I'm sure they're looking forward to playing us. End of FastScripts |
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